The sources said that barring the youngest accused brother all the others denied even meeting the girls before they went missing.

A month after CBI conducted lie-detector tests on the five accused in the Badaun cousins’ murder and alleged rape case, sources in the investigating agency on Wednesday confirmed that the three brothers and two former police personnel denied murdering or raping the girls both in the polygraphy test and forensic psychological assessment tests conducted on them.

The sources said that barring the youngest accused brother, who said he met the cousins on May 27 evening, when the elder cousin who was his friend called him, all the others denied even meeting the girls before they went missing.

The sources said the youngest of the accused brothers admitted in the polygraphy test that he knew the elder girl, and that she had called him from her phone on the night of May 27, for some money to visit the local mela. He stuck to his statement — which he earlier gave to the UP police and CBI — that a neighbour of the victims’ family, Babu Ram alias Najru, who is the main eyewitness in the case, had taken away the girls from him after a minor scuffle.

In his statement, Najru had alleged that the youngest accused, along with four others who he could not see in the darkness, dragged the girls from the fields after the scuffle.

Sources, however, said the two other accused brothers denied stepping out of their home or meeting the girls that evening. Both brothers said their younger brother returned home in the evening on May 27, had dinner with the family and they slept off. Sources said they claimed they first heard about the girls when two villagers, and then police officials of the village chowki, came to their home enquiring about the girls. Sources said the two elder brothers denied knowledge about their younger brother even knowing the victims.

The CBI sources said reports of lie-detector tests conducted on the fathers of the victims, the main eyewitness and the girls’ uncle are still awaited. While refusing to comment on the involvement of the victims’ family in the double murder, CBI sources said inconsistencies in the family members’ statements were being looked at. “Forensic test results are also awaited on a pair of slippers the elder cousin was reportedly wearing the night she went missing, and a mobile phone which belonged to her,” a source said.

Both were handed over to investigating officials by family members of the girls after sustained questioning. “The family members had denied the girl owned any mobile phone, but later handed it over in a partially broken state. It had been handed over reportedly to a maternal uncle of the girls. We are awaiting lie-detector test results on these points, because during the questioning, they have been unable to give us any satisfactory responses,” a source said.

Sources said CFSL experts, who conducted the tests on the accused, “have found the responses to to be truthful”. “All the accused have denied any role in the crime in the forensic tests. From the reports we have received from CFSL, experts believe they are being truthful,” a source said.

The bodies of the two teenaged cousins were found hanging from a tree in Katra Sadatganj village in Badaun, early on May 28, hours after their family members said they went missing.